1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejection apparatus, such as an ink jet printer.
2. Related Art
Generally, as a type of liquid ejection apparatus, an ink jet printer is known that carries out printing on a recording medium, such as a sheet of paper, by ejecting ink (liquid) from nozzles that are openings formed on a nozzle formation surface of a liquid ejecting head. Such a printer is normally provided with a head maintenance device for maintaining the ink ejection characteristics of the liquid ejection head.
Such a head maintenance device has various functions. For example, the head maintenance device has a function of recovering the ink ejection characteristics of the nozzles by capping the nozzle formation surface of the liquid ejection head with a suction cap and sucking the ink that has had an increase in viscosity from the nozzle with a suction pump. Furthermore, the head maintenance device has a function of sweeping off (wiping off) unnecessary ink adhered to the nozzle formation surface of the liquid ejection head with a wiper. Moreover, ink that has been swept off and that has adhered to the wiper is absorbed by an ink absorbing material (a liquid absorbing material).
Hitherto, a printer disclosed in JP-A-2007-152940 is a known printer that is provided with such a wiper and an ink absorbing material. In such a printer, a head body (a liquid ejection head) is supported by a holder and ink adhered to an ink discharge surface (a nozzle formation surface) is swept off so as to be captured by the wiper by displacing the wiper in a wiping direction while the wiper is abutted against an ink discharge surface of the head body. Then, the ink adhered to the wiper is absorbed by the ink absorbing material attached to the holder.
In the printer described above, the ink adhered to the wiper is absorbed by the ink absorbing material by making the wiper come in contact with the ink absorbing material. Accordingly, there is a problem in that the performance of the wiper may be degraded due to adhesion of a fragment of the liquid absorbing material and adhesion of ink, which had been absorbed by the liquid absorbing material and which has solidified, to the wiper.
Note that this kind of problem is not limited to ink jet printers and is generally common in liquid ejection devices provided with a wiper that sweeps off liquid adhered to a nozzle formation surface of a liquid ejection head and a liquid absorbing material that absorbs liquid adhered to the wiper.